Born Gran Turismo in 1932 in Mille Miglia, Grant was reared in Italy in a haze of sports car racing, new rules, new ruling bodies, and great competition from an upstart called Grand Prix. He was initially successful in racing sports cars in Italy, France, Germany and England. The greater grew his reputation in Europe, the more he yearned to go seek his fortune in North America. However, it was not to be; the Americans soundly rejected Grant and his form of racing—it involved neither horses nor dogs, and who in their right mind wanted to watch any kind of race where you couldn’t see the participants around the entire length of the track. Grant only aroused the curiosity of an informed few in the Americas.
Grant was nearly killed in World War II. The Germans overran all of Italy and France, spoiling any opportunity to race. France had already drawn into a submission, unable to keep up with the progress of Mercedes and Auto-Union. Hitler was about to hit them with their latest high-technology weapon, the Volkswagen. So the Germans could gain a speed advantage, Hitler also ordered the people of Germany to build the worlds longest race tract, the Autobahn. When Germany overran Italy, Grant and his family escaped to England where he weathered the war and dreamed about the possibility of racing to come.
After the war, Grant returned to Europe and immediately enjoyed success in sports car racing in Italy, France, Germany, and England. With his successes in Europe, again Grant made his bid to immigrate to America but now had a new competition for his sports car racing—“bigbangers”. Americans seemed only interested in cars and motorcycles that made the earth shake—it didn’t matter if they were really fast, as long they gave the illusion of speed and made lots of noise. He watched as competitors like CanAm and Thundersports displaced his sport with racing that required engines with enough torque to plow all of the crops in the deep south and heavy enough to be used as boat anchors after they were worn out. In 1948, he was present when the NASCAR was sanctioned. Racing in a circle on wet sand–you gotta be kidding! That will never catch on! He threw up his hands and went back to Europe to regain his strength and composure.
After returning to Europe, Grant enjoyed enormous success. He worked as an organizer of sports car racing events, as a mechanic, and as a driver in the Le Mans Series which would one day adopt his name, still Gran Turismo at that time. With his vast knowledge of racing, he decided one more time to cast his lot in America. This is the time of his life when things would go sideways and take him in directions he never imagined.
He applied again for immigration status and was granted (no pun intended). While filling out the immigration papers at Ellis Island, a “t” was accidentally added to his first name thereby officially changing his name to Grant Turismo. It worked well for him, though, since Grant was a popular name in the South. Not having the working capital to start his own racing series, he went to work in the most successful racing venue in America—NASCAR. Since racing did not pay very well during that era, he had to become bivocational, working several jobs to pay for his racing efforts; jobs from which he gleaned a wealth of information: tuning skills as a mechanic and piano tuner in Atlanta, Georgia; savoir faire from working as a research surrogate for the McKinsey Report; writing skills from filling out the many applications for immigration; driving skills from coping with the traffic on the East Coast and Europe; and cooking skills from having to survive on the race circuit of the South.
Working for NASCAR had its adverse effects on Grant however. After having worked on the circuit for a couple of years some of his friends noticed that his IQ had been reduced by several points when he started talking in CB (Citizens Band) Radio terminology and made 3 lefts to go right. While in a tight draft with 6 other cars in a race at Atlanta, he was heard on the co headset as having said, “Looks like we have a convoy, Rubber Duck.” When the loss of IQ points became public, he was disinvited from MENSA and was no longer considered a genius—he was demoted to “just a very smart fellow.” In addition, he was also showing loss in his cognitive skills. For example, if you drew a perfect oval with only two curves on a sheet of paper, he would somehow label four corners—he even tried to label four corners on a perfect circle. Worst, he became completely confused by the concept of something stock; to him, stock was anything that maintained at least one stock body part.
To rehabilitate himself, Grant returned to Europe for a couple of years until reality was restored and his yearn to return to America to do sports car racing was renewed. On his return to America, his expertise was immediately called into play as he was hired as a consultant for the movie production of LeMans with Steve McQueen who became a fast friend. That was the opportunity that he needed to kick-start his style of racing in America. After running several GT Series races in the US and Canada, Grant saw his dream come to fruition—we finally had Gran Turismo (named for his original namesake) racing in America! Though the series enjoyed moderate success, Grant was befuddled by the rules placed on him by first, the FIA, then the ACO, and finally by IMSA.
Having fulfilled his dreams, Grant finally decided that the series was strong enough to survive on its own, and he could no longer keep up with the demands of running such a series year after year. After lending his name to the series to define the competition level of the cars (GTP, GTS, GT1, GT2, GT3, GT4, etc), he went into semi-retirement and started consulting to all levels of racing. Before going fully into retirement, he went to Japan where his soul/intelligence was artificially duplicated and used in a driving simulator game that also adopted his original name, Gran Turismo. The artificial intelligence of the game captured his spirit of competition but, unfortunately, did not capture his driving skills or intelligence in driving. In fact, it also captured and amplified the worst of his driving skills—those that were recovered from the part of his memory most affected by NASCAR. Due to that undesired influence, the AI drivers often resort to punting other drivers off the track to gain position, refuse to yield the driving line to cars already in the line, ignore the race marshals during the driver’s meetings, whine incessantly when they lose, and inexorably make left turns when the racing is at its most heated—but they do extremely well on ovals and other high speed tracks that predominately turn left. After four iterations of the game, the AI are still plagued by these anomalies.
Grant has now retired (semi) to Canada where his retirement is worth about 20% more than it would be in the US. He still does a bit of occasional online racing on the game that bears his name. He also does consulting and is prolific in setting up tunes for cars that make them perform at levels about which others can only dream. He also provides consultation and advice through local and national periodicals like the TPRA Newsletter. Minions seek his advice regarding racing, matters of the heart, chili recipes and even explains jokes for those with IQs smaller than his dog’s. Paragon? (Look it up in the dictionary, headbangers!) Myth? Legend? Figment of your imagination? We’re still trying to work that one out.